


all of the things we have done.

by phasmasarmor



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, M/M, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Solo Sibs, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2020-01-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:14:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22013932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phasmasarmor/pseuds/phasmasarmor
Summary: Hux is dragged along by Finn into the heart of the rebellion as payment (or payback) for the intel he'd given. Ben returns with his sister to find a ghost from his past lingering on base. When they're sent on a mission together to track down people from their shared past, tensions rise and sacrifices must be made.
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Poe Dameron/Finn, Rey/Rose Tico
Comments: 6
Kudos: 63





	1. the choice, or lack thereof.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [serpensnoctis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/serpensnoctis/gifts).



> canon compliance? we don't know her!  
> Hux and Ben don't die, Ben and Rey are siblings, and that's that.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hux and Ben settle into their lives on base. Hux and Ben are also confronted by ghosts of their past lives.

Hux is cold.

It’s been a full hour, by his own count, since he’d woken on the floor of the _Millennium Falcon_ , surrounded by people who likely wanted him dead. The traitor, Dameron, the Wookie, and the girl, shaken to the core by something she wouldn’t reveal to her companions, least of all the former General of the enemy’s army. Upon waking, it had taken him far too long to recognize her as who she was: one of the ghosts Ren chased across the galaxy for so long, the girl who scarred him, the girl who scared Snoke with her power. Since Starkiller Base, his obsession with her and Vader grew unbearable, driving Kylo Ren into insanity: briefings would turn into recollections of visions he’s had, the voices inside of his head. Only then did Kylo Ren - and the Force - truly terrify him.

“Does it hurt?” Dameron appears suddenly and kicks his left leg, marking the fourth time he’s done so.

Before the unfortunate blow to his head, Hux remembers his very simple instruction to FN-2187. “Shoot me in the arm,” he’d said. “Or they’ll know it was me.” Why had he been spared? Why had he been brought along? None in the group have offered him the explanation, the girl wrapped up in her own little world, reminding him too much of Ren, the traitor helping her. Dameron only told him he had no answer. Execution, he believes. Payback for the Cataclysm of the Hosnian System.

Through gritted teeth, Hux replies, “Yes.”

“Good.” Dameron settles beside him, then, satisfied with such discomfort. The last three incidences, Dameron had wandered off again to the front of the ship with the Wookie, so what had made this time so different? Such proximity set Hux’s skin to prickling beneath his uniform and the urge to bolt tenses his leg muscles. He wouldn’t get far, not in a ship, not with his leg in the state it’s in. Hux wouldn’t give Dameron the title of ‘mortal enemy’ - that is reserved for a special someone - but he’s certainly tempted.

As Hux closes his eyes against the growing pain from his thigh, Dameron says, “I have a question.”

“I don’t suppose I can refuse you an answer,” Hux sighs. His fingers have found the edge of his wound, the gauze wet with blood. His blood. The thought makes his stomach churn, but he can’t keep himself from fidgeting with the edge of the bandaging. “Ask away.”

Silence. Unsteady silence, actually, interrupted only by beeping droids as they whirr about their feet. After the stretch that follows the permission, Hux peeks open an eye. Dameron’s head is down close to the BB-8 unit, petting its side gently.

“Why did you help us?” He asks without looking up. “What did you gain? What would you have gained, except--”

“A blaster wound to the chest?” Hux finishes for him, then snorts. Dameron frowns at him, and Hux just closes his eyes again and shrugs. “I just wanted Kylo Ren to lose. The Resistance was my best chance of reaching that particular goal." The pair of them had taken an instant dislike to one another, their rivalry brewing as both he and Kylo Ren vied for the spot as the Supreme Leader’s favorite. Hux knows how juvenile it is, looking back on it, yet they couldn’t help themselves; they simply loathed each other enough to forgo their maturity in spite of one another. When Snoke was slain -- Hux steals a glance of the girl in white, who disappears into another alcove of the ship -- Ren took up the mantle, Hux had to act out of self-preservation. Ren would kill him eventually, now that Snoke could not stay his hand.

“What do you think will be much different about the Resistance base? I know many, many people that’d like to put a crater in your chest.”

“Had I been given the choice,” Hux says, “I would have picked the Star Destroyer.” FN-2187 had stolen that choice from him when he chose to crack his head with the butt of a blaster. Still, though, he must steel himself for his impending doom. So long as Kylo Ren loses, he thinks. It will have been worth it.

Every moment of it.

* * *

The dark void of space stares at Ben with its millions and billions of unblinking eyes.

Someone, anyone, could disappear into the vastness and never be seen again. Uncle Luke had managed it, avoiding the Resistance and the First Order for years in his self-exile, even with the trail of breadcrumbs he had left behind. What would be so

"Because," Rey says, "the Resistance still needs you, Ben." _I still need you_. She does not say the words aloud or even think them, but the feeling inside of her exists to bursting.

"They do so well with just you," Ben replies, grunting. The Resistance didn't _need_ him at all. They had _her_ , little Rey Solo, back from nowhere and back from death itself. Ben had come back too, but not of his own volition. The darkness had begun to close around him, the voices of Skywalker, his father, his… mother, they all beckoned to him and just as the threshold could have been passed, he’d sat up, gasping and aching, back on Exegol and in his body. He can’t remember if he’d cursed at her, but he wanted to. Still, he wants to. She had to be so selfish, couldn’t let him go, couldn’t stand to be alone.

“I don’t need you to not be alone,” she snaps, sensing his thoughts. Ben wonders, and not for the first time, if there is any sort of off switch for their connection, for he would find that of great use about now. Snoke first had claimed their tether was his influence, and then strangely, Palpatine claimed that for himself. Their deaths had not severed their tie, and Ben and Rey would go on for stars know how long, always strictly aware of the other’s presence, their thoughts, and, worst of all, feelings. She’s frowning, irritated with his so-called stubbornness.

Ben snorts. “Not as stubborn as you.”

“Shut up,” she says.

“Why did you bring me back? What could I offer the Resistance that you don’t?” Ben finds his eyes in his reflection. His dark eyes, like his father’s, his father’s jaw, this mother’s smile proved to be an awfully strange combination on his face. Rey had a similar combination, but she vastly favored their mother, her eyes, her lips, her face. She even boasted that fiery Leia Organa spirit. Ben had his father’s doubts, worry, and a sordid past of his own.

“A symbol of hope?” he asks when she doesn’t answer. “No, that’s you. The new hope for the Jedi? Mm, no, that’s you again. A leader, perhaps? They wouldn’t like my methods.” Ben rolls his shoulders, then, and quietly he adds, “The only person in the Resistance that wants me is you, Rey.”

Just as quietly, she asks, "Isn't that enough?" 

Not always, he thinks. Her shoulders stiffen at the words, and she goes deathly silent. Ben squeezes his hand into a fist, releases, and does it again, exhaling a deep breath each time. A grounding technique from the Temple, one that had carried on. It helped mostly, and sometimes it was nothing more than something to do. 

"Just leave me at the next filling station," he finally says.

"Stop being dramatic," she sniffs. 

* * *

"Stop being dramatic!” 

Dameron’s arm is tucked around Hux's middle, helping him to hobble to help him down the gangplank and into their lush, green surroundings. Terminals seem to have sprouted from the growth, and other ships peek out from trees and bushes alike. So this is where they've been hiding. There aren't many of them left, not demanding as many instruments to accommodate them, certainly not demanding much else from the environment around them. Despite himself, and his new allegiances, he can't help but think how easy it would have been to wipe them out here if only Supreme Leader Kylo Ren had ever found them. But Ren chased his ghost, the mysterious voice of Palpatine that came to him in random bursts to do his bidding.

Hux grunts as a droid slams into his left leg. "Sor-sorry," it chirps, and it whirrs away into the heart of the base. Hux is forced to lean more of his weight into Dameron's side. Dameron adjusts to accommodate it, the hand on Hux’s side tightening.

"You'll find that being shot in the leg is no walk in the-- fuck!" Another bump into his wounded leg and the white-and-orange droid beeps a sardonic apology as it passes.

Dameron snorts. "You were saying, Hugs? Watch your step." 

* * *

Ben has begun to enjoy the Resistance base, specifically the expansive forest that surrounds it. It offers privacy to those in need, for more carnal needs or simple ones, like a quick nap. In his case, Ben used it to recharge. Silence has always been a comfort to him and the simple serenity of nature had an abundance. He would always go far enough so that the noises of the base couldn’t reach him and his only company was the voice of the world’s breeze.

Rey keeps him busy with training together and the painfully long introductions to everyone that he felt often in need of release. His sister tried to get him to take it out on her during their training, but he would refuse, would run into the forest with her hot on his tail. This time, she’d stayed behind at the base, but sent her thoughts, unobtrusive, to his just to make sure he hadn’t run too far off. 

"Finn and Poe will have a mission for you soon," she'd promised him earlier in the day, coupled with another promise to leave him alone once the missions were enough to keep him busy, out of trouble. He had laughed, and she had threatened to smack him. Just how much trouble could he get in with the whole of the Resistance surrounding him, with no weapon to counter their hundreds, thousands. The desire to commit some violent act would well inside him like water into a suspended pail, filling it higher and higher until it threatened to spill over. Ben knew at that point, it was time to step back and find his peaceful place to meditate. 

He has already been gone for some time now, so it’s likely that Rey or Chewbacca would come to retrieve him soon. His heavy footsteps pick up, getting lighter as he bounds through the brush and fallen limbs of trees. Eventually, Ben finds himself on a tree branch, so high up to feel the wind in his hair. His whispering companion that would tell him tales of the world or whistle a tune that Ben had never heard before. The true definition of peace, he thinks. Solitude. He wonders now, just how much better it would be to run away for good. Take a ship and find himself a quiet planet to die on, or simply go deeper into the woods. 

But Rey appears at the base of the tree, always one step behind him. Just as she always has been. 

* * *

The light of day is just beginning to disappear as Hux wakes fully. There’s a shawl that wasn’t there before he’d fallen asleep, a pale green thing, and he wraps it around himself. It’s warm, warm enough to fight the chill of the biting wind that shakes the leaves in the trees. Most of the work has died down with the setting sun, but officers all milled about their terminals in groups. Their joy died momentarily anytime he caught their attention, not that he minded. They did well to keep an eye on him, just like D-0, to report it back to Generals Finn and Poe Dameron. D-0 is just preferable company as he made his nightly hike through the forest. D-0 is quite useful at unsticking his cane when it became lodged in a patch of mud, though it often got that way when it would roll into his path.

Hux finally finds a place where the sound of the base below doesn’t reach him, and, at the base of a tall tree, he slowly lowers himself to the ground. His leg is healing nicely, but all the walking he did still took a toll on the recovering limb. Three weeks of recovery wasn’t enough for the strain, and yet, the moment he woke up, he was up and going.

D-0 whirrs to his left side. “Ho-how is -- injury?” Its strange speech pattern was endearing to Hux. As a child, he’d stuttered fiercely until Father had all but smacked it out of him. Still, if he’s drunk or angry enough, it rears its head, tripping him up on the simplest of words.

D-0 tips its head. “Hurt? Hurt?”

“Yes, it hurts,” Hux mutters. “It always hurts.”

“Med-medpack? Medpack stop-stop hurt,” D-0 says, carefully rolling between his legs, prodding its little nose against the leg.

“Ouch!” Hux glares. “No touch, remember, Dee?”

“Re-rem-remember, yes.” It pecks him again. “Remember-ber ouch.”

An involuntary growl comes out. He’s rather tempted to use the cane to smash the droid to pieces. “Stop it, you little shit. I mean it.”

“Ou-ouch,” it chirps again, but this time, it rolls away from the injury. “Medp-medpack, li-little sh-sh-shit?”

Hux scoffs a laugh and closes his eyes, focusing on the humming sounds of nocturnal life. “In a little bit, Dee. Just let me rest.”

“Ye-ye-yes. Resting -- important!”

* * *

Rey has been hanging off of his shoulder this morning ever since she's woken up. She’d spent the first hour urging him to talk about it, the war, the voices - every little thing that kept him up at night. Even now, she’s prompting him with, “You haven’t slept. Is there -- a reason for that?" 

"A feeling," Ben says, and it's true enough. Something is off about the base, an upset that radiated from each person. Perhaps it is his proximity, as it had been in the First Order. Just like then, no one would approach him, nor speak without him speaking first. At first, it hadn’t been so bad, but now he assumes the full effect he had them finally coming into place. It had brought him solitude, though, so he didn’t mind.

Rey picks at her rations and offers him some, which he declines. “You also haven’t eaten,” she adds with a sigh. “Are you sure you’re--”

“I’m fine,” Ben snaps, and then he rolls his shoulders that have tensed with exhaustion. He takes a deep breath and says, “I’m alright, Rey.”

Rey continues to eat in strained silence. He feels rather bad for snapping at her, but... he _is_ tired. His mind hurts with overwhelming feeling - his, hers, the whole base! Trying to amend his transgressions against the galaxy, and all the talking, and the weight of Mother’s death. That wound is fresh still and its strain had reopened that which had formed when his father died.

“Well… Good news,” Rey eventually says between large bites of her meal. “Um. The Generals have a mission for you. You won’t -- be alone, of course, but it’s a mission.”

“It’s a mission,” Ben repeats with a sigh. He stirs the blue milk in the glass contemplatively with one hand, the other scratching his neck. “Who’s my mission partner going to be?"

* * *

Hux feels like he's seen a demon.

* * *

Ben feels like he's seen a ghost.

* * *

Kylo Ren stands before him, dark eyes glinting horribly in the light.

* * *

Hux stands before him, supporting his weight with a cane, green eyes full of fear.

* * *

Hux is going to die. Ren followed him here to kill him. This can't be his mission partner. This is a ploy. To take down the Resistance from the inside, and Hux will be the first casualty. Unless this is just a way for the Generals Dameron to deal with him without dirtying their hands. Yes, that sounds right. But to use Ren -- that is an ironic twist of fate.

"Do you really think so poorly of me, Hux?" Ren asks, nose scrunched. Still not one to stay in his own head, it seems.

"I won't do this mission," Hux says, ignoring him. He finds Dameron's eyes, dark and uncaring for the plea. "Not with him. Anyone but him.”

"Well, seeing as I'm your superior officer--" Dameron grins in what must be amusement at that fact "--I don't care. He’s the only option.”

"How's your leg doing?" Finn asks. "Is it any better?"

With a sharp, agitated sigh, he says, "Slightly, but that's--"

"Then you're good to do the mission." Dameron smiles at him, then Ren. Ren is still staring at him with those blank, black eyes, and Hux has to put his right hand over his left to keep him from shaking. “Have fun!”


	2. the way we sleep.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben, Hux, and D-0 stop at Elyse Station.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a filler chapter bc i just wanted to write and i am,,, still plotting this fic as a whole, so. enjoy simple pleasures.

"Both of you still alive?" 

General Dameron has called them every hour since Hux and Ben had left base - twenty times, according to the call log that displays in a faint blue shimmer beneath Dameron's face - and the same opening question every time. 

Hux nods once, stiffly and shortly. Unfortunately for you, he thinks. Hux is still strictly under the impression - _illusion_ , Ben calls it - that this is no more than an elaborate assassination attempt. Hux has made his peace with dying, but he isn't necessarily looking forward to it. "We are," he says. 

"You sure? I don't hear Ben."

Hux's eyes find the mass of black curls in the crowd of the filling station. He's speaking rather animatedly, his hands emphasizing the importance of the words Hux cannot hear as he catches up with appears to be an old Resistance friend. He and Ben, however, had spoken only out of courtesy, and for Ben to inform him that this was not a scheme to kill him. At each insistence, he had scoffed, snorted, or given a curt nod. Ben's false front of kindness would not dissuade him from believing the truth behind the mission: Ben Solo is going to kill him, and the Resistance is providing him the means to do so discreetly.

"He's speaking to someone." He taps a button on his comm to turn the camera around. "Just there." 

"Okay," Dameron says apprehensively. "Any trouble? Looks pissed." 

"As far as I'm aware, he's simply catching up with a friend." 

"Hey, Hugs. Just. Yes or no."

"No," Hux says. He hates that fucking nickname. It's degrading! But he supposes that's the point, after all. "No trouble whatsoever." 

"There ya go. I'll call you again in an hour, and I'm expecting the same answers." 

"Yay," Hux replies flatly, but Dameron is gone. Sighing, Hux looks around again. 

Elyse Station is a monumental spaceport, too large for the small moon it calls home. It's made of white stone, fifteen stories tall, with clear windows. Hux can see the patrons inside as they mill about with their families, either heading for their shuttles or to browse the many shops provided. His stomach, uneasy from Ben's company, protests its base desire to eat. Once they've secured a place to stay for the evening, Hux will simply sleep to avoid the obligations of his body beyond his exhaustion. This stop had been Ben's suggestion after he'd fallen asleep amid an asteroid field, and it was close by. "There are fewer people around," Ben said. "If someone comes after us, we'll know."

Yes, fewer people around to witness my murder, Hux had thought, then Ben, ever-present in his mind, had laughed. Hux had never felt him there, sifting through his thoughts and memories, but he was there as if he had nothing better to do. 

"I do have a lot better to do."

Hux whirls around to face the voice, but his cane slips out from beneath him and he begins to fall. A steady hand grabs him around the middle and rights him with ease. Hux bats it away, especially once he sees just who it belongs to. 

"Ben, don't -- do that." 

Ben snorts, amused. "Save you, or --" 

" _Touch_ me. Don't touch me." Before Ben can make a smart remark, like always, Hux asks, "What took so long? Did you get us anywhere to stay? That's what you said you were doing, Ren, and --" 

"Don't call me that," Ben says, an edge to his voice, but Hux ignores it.

"Did you or didn't you?" His head hurts, pounding in his skull. He hasn't slept since their mission began, over twenty hours ago now. The seats in the ship aren't comfortable enough to afford him more than a long blink of his eyes. Hux can see the dark circles beneath Ben's eyes with how close they remain. Dark circles that forebode the worst of Kylo Ren's tantrums, when exhaustion shortened the fuse on his temper and Hux always knew to prepare a report for when something or someone took the brunt of it. 

"I did!" Ben shouts. Hux tenses at the sharpness of his tone, drawing in an involuntary sharp breath. No grip takes his throat - _not yet_ \- but he does not risk any sudden movements. Ben is still Kylo Ren underneath this new façade, those same intense eyes the color of the void between stars. Still so easily anger, still so frightening. After the girl had killed Snoke, he'd become so much worse. Unchecked, unchallenged by his master, killing at will anyone who dared to accidentally inspire his rage. 

"I'm not--" Ben growls then he breathes sharply out through his nose. He nods his head slowly as if speaking to someone Hux cannot see. The girl, instinct says, whispering calmness to him. "I shouldn't have. Raised my voice with you," Ben says with a softness that he should not possess. The girl's influence works quickly, it seems. If she's not speaking for him. Is that how the Force works? 

"I did. Get us somewhere to sleep, for the next two nights." He slips a thin, plastic card into Hux's hand. "Two nights." 

Two nights? The mission is only meant to last a week, and they have still at least another day before they reached the Yastao System. Aynia had, according to Dameron, contacted them just a few days ago to deal with a problem camped out in the hillside. A group of ten, if he remembers correctly. Ten to two. What odds those are. 

D-0 wheels around his feet, back from its scouting expedition. "No-no threats-eats detected!"

Ben lifts the bags from his feet. "Thanks, Dee-Oh." He turns away, with the droid wheeling after him. Ben makes it halfway across the courtyard before he stops and turns. 

"Hux?" 

Hux quirks his brow in answer. 

"That isn't how the Force works."

* * *

As Ben wakes, the one coherent thought that comes to his croggy mind is as simple as this: _I'm cold_. 

The blanket is wrapped tight around him as he rolls to his side. The windows are opened halfway, allowing the cool night air to seep into the room in slow and steady bursts. The curtains are ghosts, dancing in the breeze's sway, and he finds that he cannot pull his eyes away, entranced and still waking.

Eventually, his eyes move from the ghosts in their dance across the room. D-0 stirs near the edge of Hux's bed, cone-shaped head bobbing as it rocks with the breeze's rhythm. From D-0 to the duvet, he searches for the lump beneath them, only to find the blanket flat, tucked underneath the pillows. 

Ben stands and bounds to Hux's bed. Still warm, so it's unlikely he's been gone long. Why hadn't he taken D-0? And his cane, where had it gone? Ben blinks a few times. Gone, logically, with its owner.

The window. Ben hadn't opened it before he'd gone to bed, and Hux had fallen asleep near-instantly. How could Hux, who can't manage his own two feet for long without that damned blaster wound from aching something fierce, have left, cane in hand, out of a fucking window? Bold, he thinks, with how close it is to Ben's own bed. A boldness Hux absolutely does not have. 

Then again, Hux had been bold enough to give information to the Resistance. 

Light spills into the room from the refresher, where a silhouette shuffles out. Worry leaves Ben quickly, only to be replaced by anger at himself for being so foolish, as Hux comes into view. Backlit by the yellow lighting of the refresher, his red hair sparks with gold and copper and amber. 

"Lights off," his tired voice says as he rubs ferociously at his eyes. When the lights don't dim instantly, Hux turns, cursing, and flips the switch manually. When he turns back, he sees Ben. 

"What are you staring at?" he asks indignantly. 

"Did you open the windows?" Ben asks instead. 

Hux's brows pinch together, confusion contorting his expression ever so lightly. 

"I did," he says. 

" _Why_?" 

"I was warm." 

When lying, everyone has a tell. Even if Ben couldn't use the Force to probe his thoughts, Hux's tell is the slight tick of the jaw. His thoughts tell Ben that he'd had an unpleasant dream, starring the both of them and Kylo Ren's lightsaber. Hux shifts uncomfortably as the dream reenters his thoughts, but if he assumes Ben is pulling it from him, he says absolutely nothing. 

Ben shoulders tighten, anger at the reminder of who he used to be. Who Hux thought he still was. Why is it so hard for the General - former General, he reminds himself, and current mission partner - to think of Ben as a separate entity? Ben had always been different than Kylo Ren. Ben had been dead, dormant, for years as Kylo raged against the galaxy, but now Ben has returned to his rightful place. 

"I thought you'd left," Ben admits, expelling a sharp breath out of his nose. 

Hux's eyes flick from him to the open window, and he snorts. "Out of a window? And I'm the paranoid one." 

"Your bed was made," Ben says defensively. "Your cane was gone, and the window was wide open." 

"You didn't check the refresher. It's hardly my fault you jumped to such conclusions." 

Hux limps past him and to his bed, methodically undoing the meticulous bed before he slides beneath the thick comforter. 

"Who the fuck makes their bed just to go to the fucking bathroom?" 

Ben slams the windows shut.

* * *

D-0 taps Hux's thigh. "H-hurt still?" They had remained behind as Ben bounced between the shops of the spaceport. He had insisted upon it, in fact, not wanting to be slowed by Hux's hobbling. But his absence meant that Hux could open the windows wide open and fresh air into their room. Together, he and the droid sit on Ben's bed, the cool wind lapping at his bare arms and making him shiver. D-0 has spent the time since Ben's departure pestering him about his leg, and the cold, and that it is Ben's bed, and his leg. Hux lets his eyes slide shut this time, imagining the breeze belongs to his childhood home on Arkanis. 

"It does," he mutters. "As it did ten minutes ago, and will ten minutes from now, Dee-Oh."

"Find-d-d Ben?" the droid suggests helpfully. Hux waves a dismissive hand, which D-0 assumes will brush against its metal and warns him, "No touch, p-p-please." 

"Sorry," Hux mutters. "And no, I... don't think that's necessary. Don't bother him." 

"Med-medpack?"

"I went through the worst of it without one. I'll be alright." 

D-0's little head decides it will forgo its own code and burrows beneath Hux's hand. 

"H-Hey," it says as if Hux had instigated the contact. 

"What? You started it." 

"Hey-ey. Cold hands-s-s." D-0 looks up at him, then. "Does it-it hurt? Your hands. Find Ben?"

He sighs and rubs the cone-shaped metal. 

"Leave him be," he says. Hux rolls onto his side to trap as much of his own body heat as he can. "He'll be more annoyed if you leave me to my own devices than worried to hear my bloody wound hurts." 

"Not bloody," D-0 reminds him helpfully and pecks the exposed skin where his shirt had ridden up his back. Hux shivers. "Cold. B-blanket would help."

"No, Dee," Hux mutters. "I'll be getting up soon, anyway. Before Ben comes back." 

* * *

Ben returns to Hux curled up on his bed. The slow rise and fall of his chest signal his sleeping state, but the scrunched expression disrupts the illusion of peace. D-0 guards his sleeping form dutifully, threatening Ben with the consistent reminder not to touch it, not to touch Hux.

At first, he will admit, the sight of Hux on his bed had infuriated him, the invasion of his personal space. He'd thought to wake him up harshly, his hands burning to crush his throat. Ben had to remind himself not to let Kylo Ren win, and he settled for clenching his fist and unclenching it quickly, flexing out the rage that boiled unnecessarily through him. The windows are open once again, and Hux, flesh raised into fine bumps, had pushed himself as close as he could to the edge of the bed. He only wanted to relax, Ben realizes, not to fall asleep. 

From its spot by the small of the former First Order general, D-0 looks Ben up and down. "St-stuck," it says. "Help-elp please." 

Careful not to brush his hands against the cold skin, Ben moves the droid from the bed to the floor, where it spins in a circle, happy not to have its lone wheel caught in the blanket. It stills beside his foot and nods once in thanks. Ben nods in kind and resumes observing the sleeping form on his bed.

Hux's face is no longer pinched up with the echoes of a nightmare, calmed now to sleeping indifference. Ben can't think of a time Kylo Ren had seen him so peaceful. Certainly not when he had been the Supreme Leader. Perhaps once before, on days Hux was too tired to retire to his personal quarters and had fallen asleep at his desk. As he thinks of it, however, even then he didn't seem so peaceful. It was always something to stress about, with Hux. 

"How long has he been asleep?" Ben asks. 

"T-two hours, fifteen min-min-utes, three-ee seconds," the droid replies the best it can, with a matter-of-fact nod to solidify the statement. The nod stops rather abruptly and D-0 then adds, "Your-r bed -- sorry, sorry. W-wake him up?" D-0 stabs at his foot with the tip of his head. "Back-ack on the bed, please." 

"No," Ben says. "Let him sleep."


End file.
